Using Java and C# for educational simulators: the case of SIMPLE-2

Abstract

Due to the impact of the new technologies in our Society, special efforts to use them for teaching-learning computer architectures have been done. This work presents a simulator of a simple architecture (Simple-2) using two different technologies: Java and C#. In the one hand, the Java version is an applet which runs inside a web browser; in the other hand, the C# version runs as an application that needs a virtual machine be installed in the system. The impact of both technologies on first year Computer Science students has been analyzed, as well as the degree of learning achieved when using the simulator for learning an architecture in a semi-autonomous way